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Jermain Defoe goes back to Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Let's have a bit more of this, please:

Craig Murray is busy drumming up interest in his new book about dirty dealings in Africa.

He has chosen some supposedly good quotes from this text to help this effort. What do his readers think about them?

Many of them are so blindingly silly and/or vulgar that they will do his cause little good, I suspect.

I pick out only two which are of some professional interest to me:

Thousands of senior British diplomats, civil servants and members of the military knew of our policy of acceptance of torture.

Thousands? Who are these people? How senior? If we are talking (generously) about First Secretary/Colonel level and above as 'senior', how many does UK public life have in the foreign policy area broadly defined? What exactly did they 'know'?

Diplomats rather pride themselves on not caring.

Fatheads rather pride themselves on being witty.

A reader adds a gloss on my earlier observations on Evolution:

... one extra point might be made, just to protect against hubris in evolutionists, who seem for the most part to have an unfailing belief in the perfectibility of man. .

You write of breeding schemes producing 'better animals'. Better for whom? I ask this because Darwin insisted on using the word 'progression' rather than 'progress'. Is it not possible that there are also some negative 'progressions' in man's continuing evolution?

Good point.

It is hard in this area to find the language to avoid teleological nuances - the idea that there is underlying natural 'purpose' out there. Even the phrase 'natural selection' conveys an idea that someone or something is effecting the act of selecting - choosing between possible options and outcomes.

But are we edging towards new scientific discoveries which start to throw disconcerting new light on how personality characteristics of different communities are, in fact, really different? That some 'ethnic groups' are, for example, indeed more aggressive or docile or even clever or lazy than others?

And that these character traits, for better or worse, are not down to eg 'colonialism' or sexism, but rather to genetics?

Thus:

Skin color has no moral significance, but traits that led to Darwinian success in one of the many new niches and occupations of Holocene life — traits such as collectivism, clannishness, aggressiveness, docility, or the ability to delay gratification — are often seen as virtues or vices.

Virtues are acquired slowly, by practice within a cultural context, but the discovery that there might be ethnically-linked genetic variations in the ease with which people can acquire specific virtues is — and this is my prediction — going to be a "game changing" scientific event.

That should be interesting.

Another reader points out that she and her partner have chosen not to have children, as they just can not afford it: is this somehow a reprehensible decision?

Of course not.

It's just that in the way of things, societies/communities (more 'conservative' as some might see it?) which favour having families as an end in itself probably will tend to replace those who treat children as a lifestyle/economic option of some sort.

Plus who generates the money to pay our pensions in a couple of decades' time as the West's Pension Ponzi Schemes run out of road?

A good and subtle Middle East piece in the Times by David Aaronovitch who (I seem to recall) had a Tough Left reputation at Oxford when I was there in the early 1970s but now offers deft analysis.

He swipes aside a now modish comparison between Israel and the Nazi villains who perpetrated the Warsaw Ghetto massacres, pointing out that Israel would need to have murdered some 500,000 Palestinians to achieve that level of wickedness:

So why the philistine insistence on this particular match? Partly, I imagine, so that the matcher can mention the “irony” of Jews supposedly doing to others what the Nazis “did to them” - as if there weren't a thousand other closer, but far less narratively satisfying, comparisons.

He makes a deep point on Responsibility:

When 13.75 million German voters put their cross against the overtly Jew-hating National Socialist list in July 1932, didn't they make themselves complicit in the events that ended up with Hanna's choice? Or, to put it another way, couldn't people that you might fall in love with, be capable - depending on the circumstances, created by millions of others - of doing terrible things?

This is another way of posing the question of the Exception - or not - of Evil.

To be continued.

For ever?

The latest round-up is here. Liberal England genially hosts.

The Roundup feminist entries seem to my admittedly less than sympathethic eye unrelentingly cross and strangely limited in their cultural 'reach', as if only current Western female angst counted.

See eg this agitated one by Me and My Army on body hair, disgustingness (or not) of.

I note only that an African friend of mine from Ghana once told me that in his part of the world men and women alike shave armpits for aesthetic regions.

Have spent most of the morning grappling with online and other HM Government services.

Thus we can not enroll for Corporation Tax services until we have had our registered company address changed. This problem arises because the soon-to-be-mighty global corporation CGC reSolutions Ltd took over another defunct company. The registered address for us at Companies House is fine. But the CT system has the old address.

Changing the old address to the new one turns out to be difficult. The tax office at the number given online and by a Helpdesk did not pick up the telephone after my holding for nine minutes. So I have had to write to them.  

Meanwhile I have been trying to extract a state pension forecast from the online system, but that does not work because (I think) our current address does not correspond with the myriad Foreign Office addresses we have had down the years. So after spending ten minutes waiting for them to answer the telephone, I now have to wait two weeks for a written forecast by post.

Sigh.

The Information Function is very difficult for governments with well established legacy systems. Moving an official process or organisation to a new secure technology is complex enough in itself anyway (remember the Tubes?). Plus the large public out there are all whirring around at different stages of life and differing abilities to engage with the system as it is, let alone a snazzy new one.

The new online services seem to work well enough when one has navigated one's way to final registration and made a careful note of all the different code numbers and passwords one needs. BUt what a faff achieving that.

Another exercise has been calling Microsoft to complain about the fact that the letters on our new Curved Keyboard are wearing away after only a few weeks' use. Eventually I got through to a series of helpdesks somewhere in the deeper part of the Himalayas. I think they promised to get me a new one, but I am not sure.

Complexity. It will be the downfall of us all. 

This piece by Jonathan Freedland offers the classic liberal-minded analysis of the Israel/Hamas conflict:

Both sides point at the other with equal vehemence, a Newtonian chain of claimed action and reaction that can stretch back to infinity.

So perhaps a more useful exercise - especially for those who long for an eventual peace with both sides living side by side - is not to ask whether the current action is legitimate, but whether it is wise.

Good. I always like arguments which attempt to explore Wisdom.

The longtime Palestinian analyst and negotiator Hussein Agha says it would have been "straightforward: if they had lifted the blockade, the rockets would have stopped".

Some diplomatic sources dispute this, arguing that Hamas actually saw an advantage in the sanctions regime: "opening up would have loosened Hamas' grip," says one. Hence the cases of Hamas firing on border crossings as they were opened.

But most Palestinians insist that a relaxation of the blockade would have granted Hamas its key objective - a chance to prove it can govern effectively - and it would not have jeopardised that with rocket fire. It would have had too much to lose.

Here is the problem. Does Hamas believe in what we call 'governing', effectively or otherwise?

Not obviously.

Take Hamas leader Nizzar Rayyan, killed last week:

I asked him if he believed, as some Hamas theologians do (and certainly as many Hezbollah leaders do) that Jews are the "sons of pigs and apes." He gave me an interesting answer that reflects a myopic reading of the Koran. "Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce.

So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people."

Freedland rightly points out that when Israel attacks Hamas, Hamas ratings in the Arab world tend to rise.

If Hamas leaders are in fact not really motivated by 'normal' cost-benefit analysis but by virulent religious hateful fanaticism aimed at annihilating Israel and Jews, maybe Israel thinks that it has little to lose from further such 'radicalisation'?

While all this mayhem drags on, two tough senior people from Israeli and Iranian intelligence are meeting somewhere in a discreet restaurant in eg Vienna. For the real Negotiation:

Iran:  You Israelis are too ... stubborn. You are outnumbered. You know you will lose, sooner or later. End the pain now. We'll help you go back to Europe. Or even stay in the Middle East, but as a respected minority in an Arab country.

Israel:   No way. We have had it with those Europeans and their Final Solutions. Why can't you guys grow up? All this whinging about Islamic victimness down the ages has left you backward and underperforming. Why not work together with us to make the whole region something decent?

Iran:  We Muslims just can't accept your alien Jewish state in our midst, tiny as it is. It gets on our nerves and drives us crazy. Sorry, just the way we are. Plus, of course, thanks to European vacillation we are well on our way to getting a Bomb which will drive you away if you don't ... submit.

Israel:  Yes, we know all about that. Do you really think we'll let you launch one?

Iran:  Do you really think we won't succeed in launching one, sooner or later? Sure you can can blow up us too, but there are more of us than there are of you - in the decades to come we'll be back in business, and you'll be wandering round the world again for ever.

Israel:  Well, if we face another Final Solution, you will end up with something that feels pretty like one for you too as it drops on your head. Call our bluff and see what happens at the addresses of you and all your family members for a start. We have nowhere to go, so if we go down you'll come with us too. You don't have the monopoly on angry irrationality, you know.

Iran:   You are really so fearless. I almost believe you. Yet have you not considered that when we Muslims die we get all those virgins up in heaven? Your threats count for so little when that exquisite fragrant prospect awaits me.

Israel:  Hmm. Good point. But my friends also have a video of you with four no-longer-quite-so-virgin infidels in your hotel room last night. Girls and boys! Quite a party. That should amuse your people when they see it on YouTube.

Iran:  (Nervously)  Whaaaat? You're far beyond crazy. Look, let's talk.

Israel:   I always like a happy ending.

I have never understood the rows that go on about the teaching of evolution in schools.

Both God and the Big Bang are phenomena far beyond our puny understandings. The task of a good teacher surely is to explain these different views in an calm, interesting way and so help encourage children to explore for themselves the wonders of cause and effect, both short-term and long-term, and the philosphical and other arguments swirling around them.

Out-and-out opponents of evolution seem to me to have a hard time explaining why breeding schemes for cows, dogs and horses tend to produce 'better' animals. If such a contrived mechanism works when humans run it, surely it is possible to expect something similar to happen naturally?

Our times show a phenomenon unprecedented since Planet Earth was formed, namely part of a species bent on choosing to defy natural processes and thereby drifting towards brisk extinction. Large numbers of people (with Westernised urban chic professionals blazing a trail) who somehow see merit in not propagating their DNA and/or killing their unborn progeny when they do propagate it. 

It does not take a raving Darwinian to work out that people who do not share those values will tend to prevail in a few generations' time.

That said, even within the decadent West some sub-groups of humans are likely to do well in any competition of the Survival of the Fittest.

Namely fitties. 

Samizdata folk are having a lively exchange over Perry de Havilland's ringing call for Disunity in conservative ranks.

His core demand:

I am not calling for the 'libertarianisation' of the Republican party along the lines I would actually like, just for the party's rationalisation. I am in essence calling for a nominally conservative party to become... conservative. The simple fact is that people can be fellow travellers on a path that leads to liberty without all marching in ideological lock-step.

It just boils down to asking the question "do you want the state to have less control over people's lives or more control?" If a person can honestly answer that they think the state is too powerful and needs to be reduced, that is a fellow traveller...

The economic crisis needs to be re-branded for a start: this is not, and never was, a 'crisis of capitalism', it is in fact the 'crisis of regulatory statism'.

John Maynard Keynes said "in the long run we are all dead"... well sadly for the Keynesians of all parties, the long run has finally arrived as it always does with Ponzi schemes.

The lesser evil, the easy option, is no longer a viable option at all and the sooner the failures of the past are not dealt with by more of the same, the better.

But one reader makes a telling if depressing point:

Most of humanity that have ever lived have lived under the most ridiculous systems - under kings, and priests and politicians, imposing on them the most ridiculous restraints. It's the norm. Individual freedom is a recent idea that has existed partially in some areas of the world, that is all, and generally more talked about than actually practised. There isn't a default freedom-loving state of man.

... Horridly restrictive systems imposed for noble or otherwordly purposes can last for hundreds of years. In Assyria, it was the obligation of every woman to serve as a temple prostitute at least once. In myriad cultures, offering one's children for sacrifice at the request of the priesthood was the norm. Virtually every society until recently practised enslavement. Jews still are denied the right to eat many foods, muslims are told what clothes to wear and how to keep their beards.

In the main, once these things are presented as a normal thing, people just do them.

... People who live in institutions get institutionalised. They get too scared to leave, because they're used to being in a safe, restricted world where it's always jam roly-poly on fridays...

A while back I had a debate with Laird and others about council housing, and he said it was good that tenants would suffer increasing bureaucracy because that would make them hate statism and we should support that. It's not true. They just get used to it, the form filling and humiliating rituals, and come to think of it as the norm.

That's what the Enemy do; they shift the Normal.

This argument has a lot of history and bitter experience on its side. It is how the EU has grown and grown. But is it quite as true as it seems?

In past ages people were limited in their knowledge and 'scope'. So there was no real reason to rise up against tyranny if no other alternative could be conceived.

Now at least for the first time ever there is a quite new situation: many different ideas out there, and mass access to them.

Which maybe explains the currently fevered attempts by governments and other official/statist institutions round the world to grab for themselves more power - do they instinctively sense growing lack of control and so want as much padding as they can muster, to give themselves a better negotiating position when things start to deteriorate?

Or not.

Maybe the human condition is indeed at root passive, unambitious and fatalistic.

It takes special courage and self-sacrifice to face up to well organised, determined and well-armed tyranny. The examples we cherish - see eg the intellectual and physical agonies of Thomas Cranmer - are so striking in part because they are so rare.

Thus today the people of Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea and other places evince a staggering capacity for sinking into sustained oppressed apathy, although in each case the argument might be made that the local regimes do a good job in denying the public the chance to understand possible choices and violently squashing coherent opposition.

Just as the public get more sophisticated, so does state oppression.

Realising that people expect choice these days, the political establishment pretend to offer it to them. At the least this creates enough confusion to buy more time for existing attitudes/norms/institutions to entrench themselves.

Atlas Shrugged of course takes all these issues and reduces them to the darkest level of basic principle.

After John Galt indeed manages to stop a lot of the world - after years of personal hardship and uncertainty, and with many people dying in the process - there is the famous positive ending. The small band of heroic freedom-lovers decide that the time has come to rejoin and rebuild society, according to honest principles at long last.

Yet in the book that outcome occurs because the Collectivists seem finally to grasp the scale of their folly and either go insane or just wilt away and give up.

But is this realistic?

What if the Tenacity of Tyranny really is greater than the Impulse to Freedom?

One of my theories of personal advancement has things thus.

Imagine a room packed full of inflated balloons. One of the balloons has the ability to self-inflate. It does so.

It expands. The other balloons squeeze themselves in to accommodate this growing companion. Some may eventually pop under the growing pressure

The self-inflation can continue for some time amidst the popping of other balloons and their contortions, until the growing balloon reaches the limits of its self-inflation or until it itself bursts.

As with balloons, so with people.

Some people have a huge self-inflating capacity. They need or demand far more 'space' than other people, either through sheer force of character or through restless ambition.

And, life suggests, most people meekly contort themselves to let the growing balloon have its way. A fierce line of "It's just a fact. I have more Will than you, so why bother to resist?" is often impressively effective.

Thus we now see President Sarkozy self-inflating at a huge rate:

In his new year address, Mr Sarkozy made clear that he had no intention of taking a back seat after what he regarded as the most dynamic turn by any leader in the Union’s rotating presidency. In 2008, he boasted, he had not just shaped the destiny of France, but of the whole world.

“The initiatives which I have undertaken in the name of the French presidency of the Union – coordinating the action of all the Europeans and bringing the heads of state of the 20 biggest world powers to Washington – have enabled the world to avoid sliding down the slope of ‘everyone for themselves’, which would have been fatal,” he said.

As well as taking credit for organising the emergency summit of the G20 nations in Washington in November, Mr Sarkozy made clear that he intended to impose his views on a “new world order for capitalism” at a G20 meeting in London in March.

Fascinating to watch other EU leader balloons (including alas our own) squidging themselves in to let his volume and gloire expand voluminously in all directions.

Pop.